Hybrid Google Meet

Create a more equitable experience for those joining virtually.

*** Hybrid meetings ***

Hybrid meetings are when some participants are together in person, and others have joined virtually. They're challenging for several reasons, but a key one is that the circumstances inevitably favour the people who are together in person: they can hear one another better, conversation flows more naturally, side conversations can happen, and interjecting can feel more natural without the audio delay.

Participants who have joined virtually can sometimes find themselves forgotten about, with their raised hand going unnoticed, or their chat messages only viewable by other virtual participants (since in-person participants share a TV screen).

One to make a more equitable experience for all participants in a hybrid meeting is to ask all participants — whether virtual or in person — to use the hand raise feature, and have access to the chat. This requires the in-person participants to have their laptop with them and to join the meeting, even though they've already joined via a shared TV screen.

The challenge with this approach — which this extension aims to address — is that unless those in-person participants remember to mute their sound and their microphone before joining, it will create a screeching feedback sound. And through force of habit, participants will inevitably accidentally unmute themselves in a meeting, even though they're in person and speaking through a shared microphone.